Category: Ethical Yarn

I have, so far, been quiet about lockdown. But it feels odd to not share my experience on such a landmark event in all our lives. Our lockdown started a little earlier than most, with the children staying home from school on 17th March. School closures actually happened almost a week later, but we followed the Prime Minister’s suggestion that stopping all unnecessary social contact was particularly important for people with certain health conditions, and that they should be shielded for around 12 weeks. Some of you will already be aware that my children were born extremely prematurely, and had a very rocky start to life which has left them with less than perfect lungs. This means they are more likely to get pneumonia and complications arising from pneumonia. So, whilst they ordinarily live a normal life and aren’t particularly impacted by their lung issues day to day, we do need to be careful with them. My husband spent the next two days sorting out the working from home issues for his office, and he joined us on lockdown, exclusively working from home, on the 19th.

Initially, I suffered from a bout of PTSD relating to the trauma around my children’s birth and their precarious first few months. I had trouble sleeping and some deeply unpleasant lucid dreams, and was suffering anxiety attacks during the day. All triggered by the wash your hands messaging – washing your hands is a BIG feature of life when you have babies in SCBU and mine were there for 140 days. But my symptoms have improved enormously, partly as a result of the primary messaging changing from wash your hands (still hugely important!) to stay at home.

Food has been a stressful subject. It’s taken quite a while for the supermarkets to accept we are on the vulnerable list, and I really didn’t feel I could burden any of my neighbours with a full shop, so we have had to make some trips out for food. Luckily we have a very good butchers and farm shop nearby and most of the customers there have been very sensible about social distancing. Less so people in the supermarket, who seem to think that as long as they pass you at speed, they don’t need to stay the requisite 2 metres away. When you risk bringing a potentially life threatening illness back home to your children, this heightens anxieties to an uncomfortable level. But, I’m very pleased to say our local community has rallied around and we now have a weekly fruit and veg delivery (courtesy of a furloughed Italian restaurant), and Sainsbury’s now has us on their list so the kids can continue their coco pops addiction unhindered. I was also very grateful to be able to order flour from the lovely Kat Goldin at Gartur Stitch Farm so my sourdough bread baking has become a constant joy.

Homeschool is interesting. It’s not too much of a stretch to say, I am not one of life’s most patient people, so home schooling my children hasn’t been an easy thing to adjust to. But, having twins sometimes has its advantages. Whilst they aren’t necessarily in the same place academically, they are at least studying the same subjects at the same time, so I’m not coping with more than one curriculum, and they are good friends, so are supportive of one another, and happy to spend long periods just playing together. Their school’s IT and our rickety internet service has been a challenge for such a committed technophobe, but I’m just about there now.

The biggest adjustment for me has been the loss of solitude. If you are currently living alone, working from home, with perhaps only a cat for company, this may seem like a strange statement. But my pre lockdown life involved me being home alone (well, not entirely alone, as I have Merlin, my dog, for company, but you get my point) for up to 30 hours each week. I spent a significant part of this time working in my natural dye business and I’ve come to realise that solitude is a vital component of my art. Having the quiet space to be creative drives my dyeing. And that is gone for now and my dye pans are mostly quiet. But, I have been spending the little time I have in other ways. The pause has given me the chance to go deep diving in my undyed stash, to discover some lovely rarer breed yarns which will be getting the natural dye treatment. The first of these, 12 skeins of Whitefaced Woodland DK have been adorned with logwood and saxon blue indigo and will go in the shop in the next few days. I’ve also had more time to gather nettles and cow parsley and currently have yarn wallowing in vats of colour extracted from these plants. I’ve also been spending some time working behind the scenes on my website and getting myself a mailing list set up. More news on this at a later date.

So whilst it was rough at first, very recently I’ve begun to wonder if I don’t prefer some aspects of our lockdown life. Is it possible that I might be living my best life right now? Shielding our children means that we stay at home all the time. The only exceptions to this, are the daily dog walks I and my husband individually take; and we only take these because its very quiet here and very easy to stay a long way away from other people. It’s not that I dislike other people (far from it!), but as an introvert, every social interaction is a drain on my energy, and recognising the impact that has on my life has been eye opening. Our lives have become very unhurried – nobody is rushing in or out of the house anymore. I’m not chasing the kids to eat their breakfast, wash, brush their teeth, get dressed, find their school bags and get in the car – all before 8am every day. We are eating more healthily (well, apart from the coco pops!), because we aren’t relying on meals out and takeaways to make up for a lack of time or energy to cook. I’m enjoying meal planning and cooking a good deal more than I was before lockdown. I’ve learned things about thrifty cooking that make me disproportionately happy – for example, all my vegetable peelings go in a bag in the freezer now for stock, rather than in the composting bin. I’m enjoying the challenge of slightly random ingredients and making a lot of very nice vegetable soups. I’m noticing things on my walks that I’ve not noticed before; was the sky ever so blue, or the hedgerow ever so verdant? The children are reading a lot more, which pleases me immeasurably. I’m taking a great deal of pleasure from our garden and from the birds frequenting our bird table – all things I was seemingly too busy to do before lockdown. And I’m unearthing long buried wips and unfinished projects, most recently a quilt now on my daughter’s bed, which I started long before my daughter was even a thought.

So, when a friend on a zoom catch up, recently asked us all if we were ‘over lockdown now’, I was given cause to think that, whilst it feels a bit odd to admit it, a little part of me will be sad when lockdown is over and we all get back to some normality. I don’t want to go back to my too busy pre-lockdown life; I want to keep the time and energy to notice the blue sky and the hedgerow, the flowers and the birds.

This has made me to wonder if anyone else feels the same. Are there any aspects of your lockdown life which you want to take with you back into normality?

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Today’s prompt for March Meet The Maker is Workspace Tidy/Mess. I don’t currently have a dedicated workspace but I have plans!

Our house is old. It’s adjacent to the mill race in the heart of the old village on the river Pang in Bradfield, Berkshire. There were three mills mentioned in Bradfield in the Doomsday book in 1086, so there has been continuous habitation on the site for at least a millennium, but probably much longer.

The house has a timber frame (so lots of beams especially the further up the house you go) and it now has a brick skin. It has big Georgian sash windows at the front (facing east. Brrrr!) but you can see from the brickwork that these aren’t the original windows. We don’t know much about the house before it was the miller’s residence in the 18th and 19th centuries. By the start of the 20th Century, the house was a bakery and beer shop. It was around this time that our two stall stable, cart house and tack room were built. By 1955 the house was the general village store and a cafe. The shop closed in 1984 and the house became a private residence. We’ve lived here since 2009

We did a lot of work to the house when we first moved here. Think rising damp to head height and nests of slugs, woodlice and rats and you won’t be too far from reality. Thankfully, that’s all long gone. The house is listed but most of the original features had been swept away in a sea of concrete subfloors and modern plaster. All that had to go. In came a new limecrete subfloor with underfloor heating and more lime was used to replaster the walls (together with miles and miles of split chestnut lathes).

We now have clay paint on the walls and a mix of oak boards and flagstones on the floors. As the house is old, it has mostly small cosy rooms. The kitchen and dining room is the one exception to this. A small oak frame and glass extension added when renovating gives us a lovely view of the garden from the dining table and great entertaining space.

So far as my workspace goes, last summer I was out in the stables. The window faces southwest so has gorgeous afternoon light. However, the roof sprung a leak this winter and we are currently waiting on listed building consent to sort that out, so I’ve moved into the house. My dye pots are in the utility room, the wool is dried in the cupboard which houses the hot water tank and the underfloor heating manifold, undyed wool is in plastic crates in the study, dyed wool is in plastic crates in the dining room. So, yes, it’s kind of taking over the house. Fortunately, I have a very tolerant husband.

Most of my “dry” work is done at the dining room table. This is where I pack my orders, wind my wool and generally do my admin. This table is also the centre of our family’s life; it is where we eat, where the children do their homework, colouring, make models, Christmas and birthday cards and roll out play dough. So, there is a lot of tidying up between activities, which, when I’m trying to work, is less than ideal. Also it makes working quite chaotic during the school holidays when we are all wanting to use the table at the same time.

So plans are afoot! One of our cosy rooms is a “study” which currently houses my husband’s computer, the piano and myriad of other stuff that doesn’t seem to have a home anywhere else in the house. My husband has a huge antique desk with a beautiful tooled leather top, but we’ve both come to the conclusion that it is far too big for the little room. So, in the next day or two it will go up for sale. We are planning a long slim table along the full length of the wall opposite the window which will provide a place for me to pack orders, and will house my wool winder and swift, as well as my sewing machine and overlocker.

However, these grand plans involve us moving the piano. As you may be aware, moving a piano is not a casual undertaking. I’ll keep you posted as to how that goes.

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In my last blog post, I promised you some detail on the stratified (layered) system employed by sheep farmers in Britain. The vast majority of wool grown in Britain grows as a by-product (or, too often, sadly, as a waste product) of the meat industry. So this post is less about wool production and more about meat production, but it’s useful as a basis for understanding why we have so many different sheep breeds in Britain. The stratified system is vital for keeping British farming productive and efficient, as it enables all the nation’s land to be used in meat (and consequently, wool) production.

It is a system more or less unique to Britain and derives from our small geographic size, varied climate and the terrain, broadly broken down into three levels; hill, uplands and lowlands.

Hill

Hill areas have harsh climates, short growing seasons, relatively poor quality of soil and long winters. Think of areas such as the highlands and islands of Scotland, and the mountain areas of Wales.

The sheep who live on the hills are incredibly hardy and thick-coated. They are excellent mothers (often lambing outside without assistance, attentive and devoted to their lambs, rich in milk etc), and are generally well adapted to living in the harsh hill conditions.

On the hills, these sheep are pure breeding stock. That is to say, Swaledale ewes are only bred with Swaledale tups, producing 100% Swaledale lambs. Female lambs who are not being kept for breeding and wether (castrated male) lambs live on the hills until the grass stops growing in autumn and are then sold on to upland and lowland farms to be fattened up for meat.

The ewes kept on the hills for breeding usually lamb for the first time when they are 2 years old. They will usually have a single lamb each year for the next 3 to 4 years. At this point, if they are kept on the hills, their reproductive ability generally declines. However, if they are moved to better land, off the hills, where the climate is less harsh and the grazing is a bit more nutritious, such as the upland areas, they will often grow bigger and have plenty of breeding life left. The improved nutrition enables them to produce twins and sometimes triplets, rather than the singleton lambs they produced on the hills.

Uplands

So, as I said, conditions on the uplands are less harsh than on the hills. However, while the land and soil do produce more nutritious grass than on the hills, it is still not hugely productive. The uplands include areas of Northern England, such as The Pennines and Lake District, and also in the South West, on Dartmoor and Exmoor.

Our pure bred hill ewes will be bred with a Longwool tup, such as Bluefaced Leicester, Border Leicester, Teeswater, Wensleydale, and Devon & Cornwall Longwool. For each breed of Hill sheep there is a preferred Longwool crossing tup. For example, Swaledale ewes are generally crossed with a Bluefaced Leicester tup. Their resultant off spring are known as Mules or half breeds.

These Mules inherit hardiness, milking and mothering abilities from their mothers and fecundity (the ability to produce an abundance of lambs), larger size and conformity (shape of the carcass), and lustrous wool from their fathers.

It is interesting to note that lambs with Longwool mothers and Hill sires do not make good Mules, often possessing neither good maternal attributes nor good size or conformity.

Once they are weaned, ewe Mule lambs are transferred to lowland farms for breeding and male Mule lambs are reared for meat production, either in the uplands or on a lowland farm.

Lowlands

The lowlands are, not surprisingly, the low lying areas of Wales and England, mostly in central and eastern England where soil is far more productive than on the hills of the uplands, and therefore mostly turned over to arable (crop) farming. Sheep are part of arable field rotations, where fields that have grown crops for a number of years are sown with grass to help improve the soil, aided by sheep poop. This is the landscape I live in.

Our Mule ewes will be bred with what is known as a lowland terminal sire breed. Terminal because this is the last breeding in the stratified system. Lowland terminal sire breeds include Texel, Suffolk. Charollais, Clun Forest, Romney, and Oxford, Hampshire and Dorset Down.

Mule ewes generally reliably produce two lambs each year, but triplets are common and quads are not unusual. These lambs grow fast on their mother’s rich milk and, once they are weaned, the easier terrain and conditions, better grass growth and their larger frame inherited from the terminal sire, mean that these lambs grow faster and produce more meat in less time.

Fattened up

I’ve mentioned the fattening up of the lambs a few times in this post so I thought it was worth quickly explaining what this term means. The word fat here doesn’t refer to fat but actually means the point at which the muscle on the animal is fully formed. It is the muscle which is valuable in the meat industry.

A sheep carrying fat in addition to its muscle isn’t a good thing for a farmer because, generally, they’ll be less successful in breeding.

I hope this has provided an insight into why we have such a large number of sheep breeds in Britain. In writing this blog post I’ve relied on information from the National Sheep Association and from the excellent book Counting Sheep – A Celebration of the Pastoral Heritage of Britain by Philip Walling. I will be taking a more detailed look at some of the breeds mentioned in this post in future blog posts so, do follow the blog so you don’t miss them.

You’d be surprised how often I hear this sort of statement. I always really, really want to ask the person making the statement what manner of material they think merino is. But I am usually too polite to do this and just say something like “Oh that’s a shame”.

I do understand. I really do. I totally get it that if you live in a centrally heated house, and are going to wear your sweater, like the magazine and pattern models do, next to your bare torso, you’ll need it to be knitted with something that doesn’t constantly prickle you. I get that. I was a child in the 1970s so I know the torment of 100% wool polo neck sweaters from those days.

But the reason why I think “oh that’s a shame” when someone tells me they can only wear merino, is that I believe they are missing out. We have such a rich heritage of wool in Britain, bourn out of a temperate climate and varied landscape (72 different breeds of sheep!), that it’s a pity they can only wear a product almost entirely imported from the Southern Hemisphere.

Whilst there are a very small number of Merino sheep in the UK, the odds are, any merino you currently have in your wardrobe, comes from Australia (circa 80% of global production comes from this country), South Africa (c10%), South America (c7% of which the majority is from Argentina) and New Zealand (c3%). British merino doesn’t even feature in global merino production statistics. In short, British Merino is a very rare thing indeed.

So, what of our rich wool producing heritage? Why does it matter that we have a temperate climate and varied landscape? Simply put, sheep breeds are specially adapted to survive in the varied climatic conditions found throughout the UK; the hardy hill sheep is a very different animal to the pampered lowland sheep. I’m intending to write a blog post explaining the stratified system of sheep farming and how efficient it is in terms of land management and when I do you’ll find it here. Those climate and landscape adaptations are reflected in the wool the animal produces, with some wools being much warmer than others; Ryeland, for example, is particularly toasty. Some wool, like Dorset Horn, has springiness so is good for hats and socks where a degree of natural elasticity is a boon. Some, like Blue Faced Leicester and Wensleydale have a beautiful lustrous, almost silk like, quality to their wool and drape beautifully. Some, like Shetland, have a natural toothiness (where the fibres cling together), which makes it excellent for colour work. Some, like Jacob, are incredibly hard wearing, without being rough, meaning you’ll get years of use from any garment knitted in such a fibre. Jacob is excellent for things that are not going to be treated kindly, like Dad and Brother hats (and, for the avoidance of doubt, I’m referring to my relatives here. Your male relative may well be much more concerned for their apparel than mine).

Wool craft, at its most elemental, is about taking a natural resource, and turning it into a useful garment. Choosing a wool with appropriate qualities for the garment in question is as essential an element to its success as picking the correct weight of yarn and achieving the correct tension, but this aspect is so often overlooked. If, for example, you choose Merino for your socks, without the addition of nylon, you are going to find them fairly short lived. But Blue Faced Leicester is still smooth enough to be worn by most people against the skin and when it is spun with a high twist, it will cope with wear very well, without needing nylon. And for tougher socks, like walking boot socks, or welly boot socks, why not consider a Dorset Horn or Jacob.

Once you understand this, the idea that you would only ever consider using one type of wool for all garments seems nonsensical.

* * *

So, if you’ve only ever knitted with merino, but want to explore further and enhance your knitting experience, what do you do?

My advice is always to first try Blue Faced Leicester. This is the softest of our British breed wools and isn’t a huge challenge if you’re used to Merino. If you are ok with that, then next, maybe try a Cheviot, or a Ryeland wool.

When you are at a wool show, don’t be overly guided by how the wool feels in the skein. How the wool feels when it’s in the skein is almost irrelevant (unless your thing is just to adorn yourself with the skeins, and then who am I to judge?). The important thing is how it feels when it’s been worked, so ask to feel a sample of the knitted or crocheted fabric. Hold the sample against your skin to warm it up. Even if there is an initial sensation, it usually passes after a minute or two once the fibre has warmed. And believe me, yarn dyers would much rather you rubbed your make up all over the sample than all over a skein, if you are wanting to test irritability!

Don’t get too fixated on knitting a garment with a new to you breed or dyer. Maybe just buy a single skein and knit a swatch. Then wash, block and wear the swatch (under your bra strap or in the waist band of your skirt, on your hip, or under your jumper on your wrist), then wash block and wear again. It’s only after repeated washing and wearing that you’ll know how your skin reacts to the wool. Louise Scollay at Knit British has an excellent regular Wool Exploration section on her podcast and this is an abbreviated version of the method she suggests. Check out the Wool Exploration episode from 30th December 2018 for a detailed explanation.

Once you know how the wool works for you and how it feels texture wise after washing and wearing, you’ll know what sort of garment it is suited to, and can then invest in a suitable pattern and quantity of yarn.

Finally, you might also like to check out The Woolist for more information of all the different breed woods. Zoe’s story really is rather wonderful and her online database of sheep and fleece is an amazing resource. You also really need one of her sheep breed tea towels in your kitchen.

A week from today, I will be showing my yarn, for the first time, at Unravel, at The Maltings in Farnham.

I can’t tell you how excited I am. For the last few months, I have been naturally dyeing up a storm in my cottage kitchen, trying new to me colours, new to me techniques, endlessly experimenting and learning. I have just one indigo vat to go and I’m ready.

I have also designed three hats to compliment the special qualities of my Saucy Dorset Horn DK yarn (300m/100g) and these patterns will be launched at the show. All three patterns are inspired by my west Cornish ancestry and our family visits to Sennen Cove, a small fishing village about a mile up the coast from Land’s End.

The first of the hats is Gommon, which takes name and its inspiration from the seaweed, thrown up onto the sandy beach, by the wild seas of winter. My children just love the curious, other worldly, shapes of the seaweed. The stitch used in the hat is a super stretchy mix of knit and purl, and an initially nerve wracking, but quickly satisfying, yarn over and drop stitch repeating pattern, ideally suited to the grippy quality of Dorset Horn wool.

The second of the hats is named Hasen (the Cornish word for seed) and is named for the myriad dried seed heads found, in late summer, in the sand dunes above the beach by the tiny hamlet of Vellandreath, about a mile along the sandy bay from Sennen Cove. My ancestors and wider family, lived in three of the seven small cottages at Vellandreath for generations. My mother, when she was alive, told me vivid stories of visiting her great grandparents there, so it’s a very special place for me. It’s wonderful to linger in the dunes, toes in the soft sand, looking for snail shells and listening to the sounds of busy insects and the gentle breeze rustling the dried seed heads. Hasen is a super stretchy rib hat, with an easily memorised twist, and a pretty bobble brim.

Finally, on the cliff path from Sennen Cove to Land’s End, where the land meets the sea, magnificent cliffs of granite endure against the wind and salt spray of the pounding Atlantic waves. These cliffs, and the submerged rocks nearby, have claimed many ships, and are the inspiration for Kleger, the last hat in this short series, which combines simple knit and purl stitches to create a super stretchy, cosy hug of a hat.

If you are visiting the show, I’d be thrilled if you came to say hello. I will be upstairs, in the Barley room. I look forward to meeting you.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, but not really daring too. It flies in the face of so much of what I see on social media. Silk is almost universally adored for its lustre and softness. It takes a dye beautifully and for that reason is much beloved of hand dyers. And was much beloved of me too for a long time. But then I learned how silk was produced and I no longer see it as desirable.

So, a quick history lesson:

According to Chinese legend, Empress Hsi Ling Shi (there are multiple spellings of her name), was the first person to discover silk as wearable fibre. There are several variations of this legend, all on a theme. But they generally go like this; the Empress was drinking tea under a mulberry tree, and a cocoon fell into her cup and began to unravel. Or she saw a silk worm spinning it’s cocoon whilst out walking in the palace gardens and thought it would be wonderful to be attired in such a fibre. You get the idea.

What is certain is that someone or a group of someones, three thousand ish years ago, discovered the fibre produced by the Bombyx mori silkworm found living on the white mulberry, and developed what is known as Sericulture, the cultivation of silkworms, and invented the reel and loom.

Initially, silk was worn exclusively by Chinese royalty, but silk cloth spread gradually throughout the China and then into Asia and Europe. Demand for silk in Europe eventually created the trade route now known as the Silk Road, taking silk westward and bringing gold, silver and wool to the East.

The Chinese wished to maintain their monopoly on this lucrative industry and travellers were searched thoroughly at border crossings with anyone caught trying to smuggle eggs, cocoons, silkworms or even mulberry seeds out of the country were summarily executed. However, eventually silk production did spread, first to Korea, then to India, Japan and Persia. And silk spinning and weaving became widespread throughout Europe. There is an old silk mill quite near to my home although it is currently closed (reopening August 2018).

Silk is a remarkable fibre. In spite of its delicate appearance, silk is relatively hard wearing. Its smooth surface resists dirt and odours. It is wrinkle and tear resistant, and it dries quickly. It is also a surprisingly good insulator so is great added to wool for winter garments and it can be worn as a second layer underneath to warm without being bulky. It can absorb up to 30% of its weight in moisture without feeling damp so will absorb perspiration while letting your skin breathe, which makes it great for summer garments too. It’s also the most hypoallergenic of all the natural fabrics thanks to its unique structure.

But the real oooh factor for silk is its unique sheen, which means colours radiate and assume a luminescence.

So what is my issue?

I’ll admit it. So far, this post has sounded like an advert for the silk industry. And this is as far as most people want to go when thinking about silk. But my discomfort comes from the way the silk is made. It’s time for a bit of biology. If you can remember back to your school days, and your lessons on the life cycle of the butterfly, the silk worm is very similar, in that, left to its own devices, the silkworm goes through 4 stages.

The first stage is the egg. The female silkworm will lay up to 400 eggs in clusters on mulberry leaves. The female dies after egg laying. The eggs hatch into larvae in around 11 days. This larval stage is the second stage. The larvae eat the mulberry leaves and moult 4 times, growing bigger each time they moult. After the final moult, the larva spins a protective cocoon of silk around itself and turns into a pupa. This is the third stage. Nothing appears to happen at this stage but inside the pupa, the worm is undergoing massive changes called metamorphosis, which change the silkworm larvae into the moth. The moth breaks out of the cocoon and flies off to mate and, in the females’ case, lay more eggs and so repeat the cycle.

However, silk production rudely interrupts the cycle at the third stage, when the silkworm is a pupa. If the silkworm is allowed to hatch out of the cocoon, the silk on the cocoon will be broken into short lengths rather than unwinding in a long single strand. This is not helpful when spinning silk. So, the silkworm farmers, kill the silkworm at this stage by placing the cocoons in boiling water. The heat kills the pupae and, happily for the silk spinners, makes the silk fibre easier to unravel. It is said that the silkworms can then be eaten but I have been unable to find much evidence that they actually are eaten other than out of desperation or as a ‘delicacy’ sold to tourists (although if you are a regular consumer of silkworms, I would LOVE to hear from you.)

So, silk production is terminal to silkworms. And this does not sit well with me. I’m not a vegan, or even vegetarian. But, I don’t eat meat everyday and when I do eat meat it is always high welfare and organic, if I can get it. I also use as much of the meat as I can, making stock for soup and risotto from bones and using up all leftovers. I acknowledge that animals have to die so I can eat meat. This does not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside (how could it?) but it’s something I think about, talk to my children about, and keep under constant review. But, I just cannot get comfortable with the idea that an animal had to die in order to give me a lovely lustrous garment, so I can look good. I just can’t look at silk garments and think they are gorgeous. I look at silk garments and see dead silkworms.

Ah, but what about peace silk? Peace silk (sometimes called Ahimsa silk) is produced from cocoons that are collected after the moths have emerged naturally. This all sound soothingly natural and happily non fatal to the silkworm. However, there are no certification authorities for peace silk and it’s entirely possible for conventional silk producers to label their products as peace silk. Additionally there are no welfare standards for peace silk so the silkworms are still potentially subject to mistreatment, by, for example, being forced from their cocoons too early, or forcing the female moths to lay their eggs on trays rather than on mulberry leaves, and putting males into a refrigerator, bringing them out occasionally to mate and then throwing them away when they were no longer able to mate. In my experience, where there is money to be made and no authorities to check, abuses inevitably follow.

My feelings also apply to recycled silk. This is basically the remnants of conventional silk left over from sari manufacture. It’s a nice way to make sure all the silk is used and not wasted but silkworms still died in order to produce it.

So where does this leave me? Well, here is the thing, in relation to woollen garments, I don’t even need silk. In the last few years, silk has been increasingly blended with that most common of breed wools, Merino, because, despite its supreme softness, Merino doesn’t bear much lustre or strength, and silk gives it both of these. This is how I purchased most of my silk (before I felt out of love with Merino – but that’s a post for another day) and I do own a couple of hand knit sweaters in this blend. But, lately, I found myself wondering why I even need my hand knits to be shiny? What’s that all about? In any event, you only need to look to a breed like Wensleydale for softness and lustre.

So, given I don’t need to wear silk, I’m happy to state that I’m not going to stock it in my shop. You will never see me dye pure silk or a silk blend. No more silkworms will die on my account!